Welcome to my new limited Podcast series, available to my Patreon supporters and Substack subscribers. 

The Yellowstone Ranch is a perfect analogy of the American church. In the show, the fictional Yellowstone Dutton Ranch is mentioned as being “larger than Rhode Island”, which means it covers approximately 800,000 acres, and would be valued at roughly $8 Billion. Owning a ranch the size of a small state gives its owner, John Dutton, an enormous amount of power, including the ear of the governor and his own small police force. The ranch is a perfect analogy for modern American megachurches, where the resources of thousands of people are often used to promote the agenda of a single man or small handful of individuals.

Although the ranch is fictional, many of the underlying values that drive the main characters in the show are all-too-common in the American church, including highly capitalistic ones. Just like in churches, John Dutton is presented as a conservative landowner, interested in protecting the land from development. In reality he is protecting his own power. The same way powerful church leaders are viewed as promoting the Kingdom of God, when in reality they too are merely protecting their own powerful platforms. Although most pastors are considered to be self-sacrificial simply by the nature of their chosen profession, the truth is, they generally use their platforms to generate wealth and promote their own ends far more than they use them to advance the Kingdom.

The truth is, we do not own the church any more than John Dutton actually owns the land his ranch sits on. While a fictional TV character could be forgiven for his hubris, pastors that consider themselves to be the owners of church buildings, property and even congregations should not be. In episode 28 of the Bodies Behind the Bus podcast, Reverend Kevin Coronado shared how he, his father and his father’s Hispanic congregation were often treated like interlopers in the predominantly white Baptist churches they met in. In spite of taking up their own offerings, which were more than enough to cover their own expenses and buy their own resources, they regularly had to fight with church leadership for the funding they raised.

That this would happen in a church is despicable. The Church does not belong to anyone. We do not own any part of it any more than we own any part of the earth. We are simply called to be stewards of all that God has entrusted to us, yet petty disputes and treating church resources as if they are property has reduced the American church to a money grubbing enterprise. The fight for territory and power have come to far more characterize the American church than love for one’s neighbor or caring for one’s community. In today’s podcast, I talk about the cost of that battle and how God saw it coming thousands of years ago.

Recently, I lost several hundred Christian followers on Twitter when I accused a well-liked member of the Twitter community of spiritual abuse and refused to bow to repeated demands that I take it back and apologize. Although many books have been written on the topic of spiritual abuse, they almost always examine or deal with abuse on an institution level, but rarely on a personal one. In fact, we love pointing fingers at the leaders of large institutions, because of how much power they have over those institutions. An institution is a group of people, however, and it is people that commit abuse.

We like talking about "institutions" however, because it depersonalizes the problem. It allows us to talk about abuse without actually having to examine who specifically is committing it. Talking about an institution allows us to reassure ourselves that since we are not an institution, then clearly we are not the problem. But if everyone is not an institution, then who is the problem? Well, no one, of course, which is why institutional abuse just goes right on happening because it is no one's fault. 

Of course, we are very comfortable pointing fingers at leaders, but leaders only make up only a tiny fraction of an institution and therefore only capable of committing the tiniest fraction of abuse. The truth is, the majority of people in almost every institution are participants in abuse. We are very happy with a light being pointed at a handful of leaders in an organization, but we don’t want it pointed at us. We don't to examine how our individual actions result in abuse.

Spiritual abuse is about power and control. It happens any time we put ourselves in the place of God in anyone else’s life. Any time we try and invoke the name of God or Jesus to give ourselves more power or authority in someone else’s life than we are entitled to have. Most people are probably familiar with the third commandment as a command to not take the name of the Lord “in vain”, which is commonly interpreted to mean not using it as a swear word. I don’t believe that is actually what it means.

The NIV says to not “misuse” the name of God. I believe it refers to using the name of God to give yourself more authority than you are meant to have. Similar to when children invoke the name of a parent to give themselves authority. If a parent sends a child with a specific message, then they are genuinely acting on the authority of the parent. Just like Christians, however, many children will invoke the name of a parent to force a sibling to do their will. That is abuse.  Too many Christians say things like “that is not of Jesus” or “that is not Godly” but that is not actually their right to decide.

Most of the teachings of Jesus are left open for individuals to decide what they mean. It is fine to quote Jesus directly, but it is no one’s right to decide for anyone else what it means to love your neighbor or what is or is not “loving.” Ultimately, we all pay a price for our own actions and decisions, which is why it is so important that we make them for ourselves. If another person is not going to pay the consequences for your choices, then they do not get to decide what you should or should not be doing - much less what God does or does not want you to do.

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Recently I have seen several Person of Color on Twitter insist that deconstruction has to involve decolonization in order to be “real”. Although I am of the opinion that no one has the right to tell anyone else how they “should” be doing something (most of raised in churches have already been “should-ed” to death), I do think it is important to be aware of what colonization is, where it comes from and how deeply embedded in white Evangelicalism the principles of colonization are.

It is very fair to say that what Mark Batterson did was in fact to colonize a certain area in Washington D.C. For all intents and purposes, he walked out a square and claimed it as his own. That is colonization. But colonization doesn’t just apply to a physical space, there is also such a thing as colonization of thought, and mass colonization almost always starts with or involves colonization of thought.

The reason for colonization is generally based on the idea of “might makes right.” If there’s 200 of us that agree on something and only five of you, we get to be right simply because we have superior numbers. Sometimes, it isn’t about the superior numbers but about superior firepower. If I have more guns than you, I get to be right. This is all part and parcel of colonization, but it all starts with a single belief: I am right and anyone who doesn’t agree with me is wrong. In today’s episode I explore colonization from its tiniest seed to it’s broadest and farthest reaching outcome - and how to identify the most basic elements of colonizing behaviors in us all.

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Mark Batterson claims that it is very important to pray very specific prayers. Jesus, on the other hand, gave us a very different model of how to pray. This is why it is so important to always be holding the messages of “Christian” books up to scripture - and not just to a single verse here or there. Batterson focuses on Jericho, where God delivered on the promise He made to the Hebrews he released from captivity in Egypt. Just looking at the fulfillment of the promise, however, wipes out more than 120 years of significant challenges the Hebrews faced before seeing the fulfillment of that promise.

God already had Jericho in mind long before Moses was even born. Yet it would be a full 80 years before God would send Moses back into Egypt to lead the Hebrews out of captivity and they would wander in the desert for another 40 years before God would lead their children and grandchildren into the Promised Land. None of the Hebrews who prayed for delivery from slavery ever actually saw the Promised Land.

Books like The Circle Maker often give the impression that God moves quickly and we only have to wait a few months or years to see answers to prayers. Mark Batterson walked a circle around his city and supposedly saw an answer to his prayer within a few decades. But was that really God? America was founded on colonization, where a group of white men laid claim to a land that was already inhabited by others. Mark Batterson walked a circle around a city where there were undoubtedly already churches operating and other people engaged in Kingdom work. So did God really “deliver” that area to him or did he essentially just steal it from others already working there?

While we may love the inspiring messages of books like The Circle Maker, it’s important to hold them up to the entirety of the Bible to determine their veracity. Christian leaders often make a lot of money by selling us truths we want to hear that may not turn out to be so true in the long run. Today. we’ll talk about prayer and whether Mark Batterson is really leading us to pray the way Jesus did and why that is important.

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In Part 2 of my series on Love & Respect, I talked about some of the red flag language that Emmerson Eggerichs’ used that we should all learn to pay attention to. In this episode I talk about some of the details Mark Batterson shares early in the book that should also be pretty big red flags. All-too-often, we trust authors simply based on the fact that they are a Christian or pastor a large church or are a best-selling author. But this means we trust them simply based on what they tell us about themselves or because so many other people trust them. In many cases, however, those other people also trust a leader because even more “other people” trust them. Everyone just trusts and no one is actually asking why should we trust this person, or should we? In many cases, these people lead us to make massive changes in our lives, but are not going to be there to pick up the pieces when their advice turns out to be crap.

The whole reason I started this podcast was to help people recognize some of the red flags that remain consistent across a number of Christian books. For instance, in the podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, it was revealed that Mark Driscoll often claimed to read a book a day, which is a highly dubious claim. In Love & Respect, Emerson Eggerichs’ also claimed to have read thousands of books, and lo and behold - so does Mark Batterson. It is exactly these kind of grandiose claims that should be a huge red flag. And there are many others.

In today’s episode I will break down why that is a highly suspicious claim, and just one of many red flags found in just these first few chapters.

Here is more on the story of Honi the Circle Maker that this entire book is based on.

Here is the article I wrote for Sheila Gregoire’s Bare Marriage blog on how to know when authors or pastors are employing appropriate scholarship to Biblical teachings.

Here is the Linktree for the Bodies Behind the Bus podcast. The episode with Kyle James Howard is Episode 25.

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In The Circle Maker, Mark Batterson reaches deep into an ancient Jewish Book of Legends to extract the story of Honi, an eccentric sage who lived outside the walls of Jerusalem just prior to the birth of Jesus. Batterson introduces Honi after his homeland has experienced a year-long drought. He weaves a rich tapestry of hyperbole in which Honi boldy draws a circle, steps inside and begins to pray. First, his prayers result in a tiny sprinkle of rain, then a torrent and finally a gentle shower.

If this were an American Epic, Honi would return home a hero - and so he does in Batterson’s tale. Although Batterson casually mentions that Honi’s return does not quite result in Disney-esque perfection, he seems disinclined to expand on that part of the story the same way he did with Honi’s great miracle.

And therein lies the rub.

The Circle Maker is one more of what I like to call “Christian rah-rah” books, which are to me quite similar to fad diet books. Yes, they may produce some relatively spectacular results at first, but those results usually come at a far higher cost than we realize. Not only are they unsustainable, but if you do sustain them, they can cause incredible damage in the long run. Like so many “prosperity gospel” books, The Circle Maker chooses to focus on the miracle - or how to achieve success - without ever exploring the costs of success. Which are often quite high.

In today’s podcast I talk about how God is not fooled. There are many things man does that he likes to claim are for the glory of God that really aren’t. The problem is, you can achieve success regardless of your motivation but achieving success for yourself will always come at a much higher cost than what we genuinely do for God. God is not deceived and God is not mocked. God always knows exactly why we are really doing what we are doing and who it is really for.

Follow Kevin James Thornton here! (Trust me, you will thank me later!)

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Whether its your favorite Marvel characters or your own family tree, origin stories matter. One of the many reason slavery was so incredibly destructive is that it cut millions of people off entirely from their roots, leaving them completely incapable of knowing, understanding or exploring their own origin stories. The Genesis story is our origin story, and like all origin stories, it tells us a lot about where we came from and how we got here.

Whether you think that Adam and Eve were real human beings or whether their story is just an allegory, it explains a lot about the modern world and perhaps even more importantly - why men and women seem to be driven by such very different things. While I do believe men and women are different, I believe that mostly stems from where we find our sense of worth and value. I think we each chase something different but if we are not careful, we can just simply trade each other’s “curses.”

Unlike most Evangelicals, I do not believe God cursed us, but rather simply identified the new norm for us, much like a parent might clue their teenager in to the realities in their immediate future the first time they get drunk. The same way a hangover is not our natural state, I believe the point of understanding our origin story is to help us understand how to get back to how things were meant to be before the fall.

Here is an article I wrote exploring Eve’s “curse” in more depth and why I believe it has been purposefully mistranslated for centuries.

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Men will often defend hierarchy as good and necessary and they are not entirely wrong. Sometimes, decisions just need to be made quickly and if there is no clearly designated decision maker, catastrophe can ensue. In some cases, lives may even be lost. Militaries, police & fire departments and medical teams have very clear and established hierarchies for a reason - because they are regularly in literally life or death situations. Most of us, however, are not. Yet the vast majority of businesses, companies and even churches continue to operate under and defend the necessity of continuous hierarchical systems.

While it can be critically important to have an established hierarchy in place in a crisis, it can be just as catastrophic to try and operate under a hierarchical system when there is no crisis. Men on top of hierarchical systems love the power and authority it gives them, but it is actually a recipe for disaster in most situations. This is even more true among couples. That’s why I developed the 49/51 principle.

I believe that the phrase “two heads are better than one” is absolutely true, but too often leaders in patriarchal/ hierarchical systems simply don’t listen to anyone else. In some cases they don’t listen because they simply don’t have to but in other cases it is because they think that doing so will make them appear weak. The 49/51 system provides a clear framework for hierarchical decision making when it’s most needed, while creating a more egalitarian framework the rest of the time.

The 49/51 principle allows couples to operate more along the lines of the U.S. Government, which has kept our nation stable for close to 250 years now. Getting a bill passed through congress requires an enormously high degree of cooperation and compromise, which is exactly how most decisions should be made. That being said, in a crisis, congress can cede complete authority to the President in order to make decisions quickly.

The 49/51 principle applies this same framework to couples or businesses, allowing them to quickly configure into crisis mode, while keeping regular day-to-day decision making in a more “congressional” or egalitarian model.

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After I recorded this podcast, I started promoting it on Instagram and an IG follower left this comment.

I started Googling to see if I could track down more information about this, and it should come as no surprise by now that my search led me right back to Sheila Gregoire’s Bare Marriage website, where her readers had led her to this same information.

The relational dynamics created in Love & Respect are the exact same dynamics on which BDSM - or Bondage/ Sado-Masochism - relationships are built. What is exceptionally problematic about this is that these are the same relational dynamics that are constantly promoted in churches, which is why it literally should come as no surprise when sexual assault runs rampant in churches.

Churches that promote these teachings and these relational dynamics are literally grooming women for sexual assault!

Although there can be a healthy place in relationships for certain elements of BDSM, one of the most fundamental principles is that of informed consent. Women who are "groomed" into these relationships are denied the aspect of consent. This also means they are unlikely to create the type of emotionally fulfilling and satisfying relationships that can actually make it all the way to “till death do us part”.

For many, the dynamics created by Love & Respect will simply result in a slow eating away of the cultural foundations that help hold marriages together. Perhaps the biggest of those being the reinforcement that organized religion provides. Following these dynamics will almost always result in the deep dissatisfaction of women. In a culture where women are free to leave their marriages, these dynamics will almost inevitably lead to divorce - even if it actually takes many years to get there.

Although women are often blamed for leaving unhappy marriages, especially where there is no outright or visible abuse, emotional neglect is also a form of abuse. Churches that promote either the book or the underlying teachings of Love & Respect are signing off on the “slow rot” to a marriage that is emotional neglect. The bar for men is set way too low in too many churches, which only demands that - at best - a man simply not physically or outwardly abuse his wife.

Any man that can meet that bar is generally considered to be a “good husband” and women who leave men like that are generally painted as selfish shrews. Women have needs that are just as great as those of men. Books like L&R focus solely on the needs of men while completely diminishing and ignoring the very real needs of women. This also doesn’t just happen in marriages. Entire churches now exist largely to cater to the needs of men, while completely diminishing and denying both the real needs of women as well as the valuable gifts that women bring to the table.

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I was a missionary for ten years in a Christian theater ministry, ministering to churches in America. I spent those ten years performing plays that were specifically written to address many of the issues that so many people are just now starting to see on a larger scale. These are not new issues, they have slowly been building for years. Organizations built on corrupt power structures can exist and even thrive for years, but over time, they slowly begin to develop cracks that weaken the foundation and make them susceptible to collapse. Which is exactly what happened in the theater ministry I was a part of.

Religious leaders frequently refer to themselves as having“God-given” authority, but is it really? Did God really give them authority or do we give them authority because they tell us it’s God’s intention for them to have it? If it is true, just how far does that authority go and where does it end? Today, I talk about my experiences with coming to understand how power was being misused in the theater ministry I was a part of and what I did about it. This is the first week in a two (or maybe even three)-part series on submission.

Next week, I will talk about Emerson Eggerich’s C-H-A-I-R-S and C-O-U-P-L-E acronyms and show how they set up an incredibly unhealthy power dynamic that is mirrored in and promoted in churches. I will also talk about how that power dynamic is a recipe for disaster - either a divorce in a personal relationship or a church or organizational split in a larger organization.

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